Category Archives: Sweets

I love to cook, when I’m in the mood, and love to share what I create. My son, the blogger, has been encouraging me (translated: bugging me) to submit a guest gluten free post as I have been adapting recipes since I found out I had celiac disease last year. Professionally, I’m an educator in an elementary school in Illinois. I love teaching, but cooking has always been a passion. My problem with writing about my cooking and baking is that I’m not really great about following or using a recipe. For the reader, and for Matt, I’ll do my best to keep track of ingredients and quantities if you promise to tweakit to your personal tastes! (more…)

Something about being in the woods builds up an appetite. Living closer to the land, building a fire for heat because the sun hasn’t crested the mountains and it gets cold at night. Hiking, chasing a toddler around camp, dodging sudden downpours. First thing in the morning and at the end of a long day, nothing sounds better than a hot meal. Except that trying to prep on a picnic table and do anything substantial on a camp stove can be laughable if conditions aren’t utterly perfect. So the challenge to myself, for spending a week in the mountains eating nothing but granola bars, oatmeal, cereal, sandwiches and sausages roasted over the fire sounded atrocious, was to figure out how to strike that balance. Read the rest of this entry →

The greatest benefit to working nights on the weekends, as opposed to when I used to cook brunch at the hotel, is that I get the traditional Lazy Sunday experience. Trying to sleep through the sun blazing sharply through my eastern-exposed bedroom windows, praying the child doesn’t wake up before 8am, or at least can occupy herself with her toys before she remembers that she has parents and they are supposed to bow to her every tiny whim. Making a cup of coffee and figuring out if I feel like making breakfast or not.

Let me preface this with two things; one, I am not a huge bread pudding fan and two, I have never made it before. Being confident in my skills, I pulled out my trusty cookbooks and skimmed the internet, comparing recipes and styles. Nothing really sounded right in my brief search, so I borrowed a little from each one. Read the rest of this entry →